


Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy From Company B

by TGP



Series: Interspecies Mating Rituals [4]
Category: Next Avengers
Genre: Gathering the gang, Gen, Grief strategies, People get old
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-12
Updated: 2013-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-29 01:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/681378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TGP/pseuds/TGP
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knew it would happen. He’s still surprised when she doesn’t get up with the dawn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy From Company B

It isn’t that he never expected this to happen. Bruce, even fractured as he is now, understands the difference between him and Betty. He’s tried to ignore it for years but every day, she’s a little slower. Every day, she’s a little more tired. And every day, she’s a little _older_.

 

He knew it would happen. He’s still surprised when she doesn’t get up with the dawn.

 

At first, Bruce tries to deny it. He tries to wake her, telling himself she’s just sleeping. She’s just sleeping. All he has to do is shake her shoulder and… But he knows better. Bruce knows death better than many.

 

The rage is next. He wakes up in the evening and the canyon is in pieces. When he goes back inside, she’s still there. He can’t handle it. He screams at her. If there was one thing he had grown to count on, one person he could trust, it’s her and now she’s left him and he’s alone. He’s so very alone. He yells and screams and cries but he’s too tired to shift and really, he’s already worked through the anger.

 

He begs her. He holds her still hand and begs her to breath or smile or just talk to him because it is so very quiet without her. The silence is stifling.

 

When he finally buries her, he sits at the head of her grave for hours, staring up at the stars and trying to figure out what to do now. He wishes he could join her. He never wanted to be alone. He doesn’t know how to do this alone. Even before Betty, before the Avengers, before everything, when he was running from SHIELD and the military and all that, he had still not been completely alone. It’s easy to blend into different populations and his skills are oddly serviceable when he applies himself.

 

This world is quiet and half dead and there is only one place he can really go, but he isn’t _safe_. His control has never been more fractured. His calm is broken and bashed to pieces. Bruce watches his friends die in his dreams while he remains. He can’t go to the city where one tiny lapse in control might mean the end of the human race. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone anymore.

 

He lays down along her grave and wonders if maybe he stays there, just like this, he might manage to join her after all.

 

Bruce wakes up to bright sun and Tony Stark standing over him. He gets up, dusting dry earth from his clothes, and stares the other man down as if that has ever prompted Tony to stop taking his dear sweet time. The man himself just lifts his brows, arms folding across his chest.

 

“What do you want?” Bruce asks because he’s too tired to deal with Tony if Tony is anything like he remembers. Bruce isn’t sure how long it’s been.

 

“I came to get you,” Tony replies and he looks oddly serious. Maybe raising children has dampened the rebel in him. Tony jerks a thumb towards some cobbled transport at the mouth of the canyon. “Load up.”

 

Bruce lets out a short, painful laugh. “Are you crazy? Do you have any clue how bad an idea that is?”

 

Tony sizes him up. His eyes flicker to the obvious damage to the rock walls, to the grave at their feet, and then back to Bruce’s face. The thing Bruce remembers best about Tony is that annoying and sarcastic and damaged as he is, Tony has always been willing to be a realist.

 

“The big guy likes me,” he says as if it’s a compelling argument.

 

Bruce wants to laugh. He really does, but he can’t. Tony… _Tony_. Bruce has missed him, _them_ , everything. He’s missed the way the world was before Ultron. He wants that back, warts and all. He wants Betty back.

 

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Tony wraps his arms around him. And then he’s sobbing because it’s so much easier to let go like this. He’s not okay. It’s been a few days but he’s not okay. Not at all. He had been running from the truth of her mortality for years now.

 

When Bruce is aware again, he’s settled against Tony’s side in the transport with a blanket of all things wrapped around him. He hadn’t even realized he’d passed out. Wind whips his hair about and stings his eyes as they bumble along. The vehicle is basic and ugly but at least it works and it seems to have been built to haul. It’s a bumpy, uncomfortable ride. Bruce sits up and watches the scenery pass by.

 

They don’t speak for hours. It takes most of the day to get to the city and its dark out when they pull up to the outer wall. A kid greets them there and Bruce recognizes the shock of white hair from years ago but he doesn’t know the name. The kid gives him a hard, suspicious look. Bruce might not know his name but the kid knows him. Or at least what he is.

 

Tony smoothes the way in but the kid keeps watching until they’ve turned out of sight. Bruce tries not to think about it. Tony parks the transport outside one of the cobbled together buildings and leads Bruce inside. There’s a vague living space, as if Tony hadn’t been sure what to do with it, and then they’re going down into the earth. The stairway is solid but the railing isn’t and Tony mutters something about teenagers as it wiggles every time he touches it.

 

The lab is a bit more done than anything else Bruce has seen. It’s not nearly as sophisticated as those he remembers from times passed, but it’s strangely comforting to be surrounded by things he understands again. There are half finished contraptions everywhere, worktables covered in dubious tools, piles of scrap and components… It’s comfortable.

 

Tony doesn’t ask him to help. He just hands Bruce a wrench and points to one of the bigger piles of scrap and then turns to some half built creation. Bruce looks around. He feels lost and battered and cold inside. But maybe… He glances at the wrench in his hand. Maybe Tony’s got the right idea for once. Bruce steps over to the scrap pile and starts sifting through to see what can be done with it. He’s not as much of an engineer as Tony but… Surely he can make something useful.

 

Bruce lets himself be lost for a little while.


End file.
